You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
We are accustomed to look forward to a new book by Dr. Reik as to a promise of a subject seen from a new angle. This expectation once again proves to be justified. In his Introduction the author tells us that the subject matter first began to interest him when Freud wrote and published his Totem and Taboo, and discussed it with the author and other Viennese colleagues. The same time-lag applies to another of his recent books, The Haunting Melody, and in both the theme must have gained from lying fallow and so gathering momentum.
The present publication is not easy to summarize, and may attempt at doing so will, therefore, be an unsatisfactory one. Its main subject is the Genesis story, and it is written in the form of a criminal investigation concerning not only the 'identity' of the criminal, but also the character of the crime itself. The investigation is undertaken in order to come to an understanding of the sense of guilt which has burdened mankind through the ages. It should be said here that this form makes the reading in part lively and interesting, but, especially in the third and fourth parts, tends to make it somewhat repetitive and towards the end even tedious.
The book is divided into four parts, the first entitled 'The Most Important Problem in the Evolution of Culture.' Dr. Reik begins by giving us a historical survey of the libido theory and ego and superego formation as evolved by clinical psycho-analysis. This description is clear and masterly, as is to be expected from a man who has watched and lived through these developments in psycho-analytic theory. He describes guilt feeling as 'the tension between the demands of the superego and the actual ego', and further shows how 'the play of many a child presents unconscious confession'. The concept of aggression is then taken up, and its introjection is described, with special stress laid on the fact that the superego becomes stricter in proportion to the renunciation of instinctual gratificatio